On the Body
by Saucery
Summary: Approximately 1000 words of Castiel being Castiel. Which means, of course, obsessing over Dean. And free will. And God. And the pizza man.


**On the Body****  
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><p>Castiel is not often inclined to exaggeration, for effect or otherwise, but he has begun to experience a certain - unfettered enjoyment - in the company of Dean Winchester. The word 'unfettered' (the <em>thought<em>) is in itself alien, for Castiel is given to servitude, and the notion of being unbound - either in his inclinations or in his actions - is uncomfortable. The rules that surround and embrace him are beautiful, for they are the laws of the world (of the Lord) and he can _see_ them, more often than not, in glimmering strands of left-behind energy, ripples in the cosmos, after-effects of events both great and small, nuclear and thermonuclear. There is less that he can see with human eyes, while in the vessel named Jimmy Novak, but he can still hear traces of that divine music in the autumn trees and the marching of insects beneath the soil, and in the (dis)ordered thrum of human hearts and the electrical circuits of urban billboards and automobiles.

There is still _law_ here, and containment, and comfort. All things fettered. All things bound. And, in their binding, intimate. Sweet. Kept. As a parent keeps a child, or _ought_ to; Castiel has seen several disappointing examples of parenthood on his earthly watches, not least of which was John Winchester.

Perhaps it is _because_ Dean is so deeply bound - and deeply aware of it - that Castiel experiences with him a sense of commonality and commiseration, beyond even that which he had experienced with Balthazar and Anna, when they had all been newly ordained as warriors. Balthazar had left, unable to endure the call of duty, eternal and unrelenting - and Anna had broken under it, or perhaps merely re-formed. Neither had maintained the steadfast (sometimes desperate) devotion to duty that Castiel has managed, millennia after millennia, with the same dogged, stubborn love that he now sees in Dean Winchester, following the edicts of a Father long gone. This commonality is - illusory, and yet _not_, in some essential way that Castiel has yet to grasp.

In Dean's company, Castiel is dangerously close to forgetting... what it means to be fettered. Bound. Which is incongruous, as Dean himself is bound by a thousand different obligations, perhaps even more (thoroughly, agonizingly) than Castiel is - Dean is bound to his brother, to his father, to his mission, and, although he seems loathe to admit it, to God. Dean is entirely a creature of duty, except for his bare flashes of instinct, and all of those tend to be at least incidentally or tangentially related to sexuality (which in itself is a binding and a duty, for his species, though no less unpredictable for being so).

Hence, Castiel makes every effort to understand human sexuality - and, by extension, human psychology. Occupying Jimmy Novak proves to be an excellent expedient. 'Humanness' is a word both ludicrous and strange, but so is mortal life, in many ways - ways that Castiel is becoming increasingly familiar with, not least because of Dean's concerted campaign of 'burger joints' and 'porn'. The liquor stores are of some educational value, as are the poetry readings and construction sites and train stations and park benches - and Castiel is beginning to gather that a great deal of humanity - humanness - is derived from utterly involuntary physical or psychological reflexes. Castiel has already acquainted himself with the erection, the hunger pang and the 'hangover' (over what?), although some things still remain a mystery, such as the pizza man's need to discipline the lady he delivers the pizza to (surely not a good business practice), although it might have something to do with Dean's phrase, "spanking the monkey," which is, after all, also about disciplining a simian. Castiel is not entirely sure why discipline is necessary, although it certainly is a virtue, albeit not one he is accustomed to thinking of in the context of fornication - or rather, not one he is accustomed to _humans_ thinking of, in the context of fornication. Obviously, much still remains to be learned about being human.

Ergo, Castiel does his best to pay attention to his body.

Or rather, to his vessel's body.

It is a curious thing, occupying a human vessel, but beyond the quiet pulsing of a body around him (reminiscent of some muted, fluid time Castiel barely recalls from his own Creation, when he had been - or so he surmises - submerged in God) there is the peculiarity of the mind, of _having_ a mind so teeming with sensations and thoughts, buzzing about him like flies around a corpse, which is only natural, of course, given that the body is in a perpetual state of re-animated death. (Cells, dying and regenerating at a speed too fast for the human subsisting on them to notice. But Castiel notices. And measures.) It is painfully slow, to him, the maddening trickle of sweat down his vessel's nape; the muted fizzle of neurons; the clumsy, heavy thudding of the heart; the releasing and relieving of hormones. Castiel is no winged glory, here; he is a fly caught in amber. Everything is _slow_. Caught. Present. Coagulating as blood does, on a laboratory slide. It strikes Castiel as some sort of irony - not that he was ever particularly good at grasping the concept - that human beings manage to live so _fast_, or, at least, to give the impression of doing so. And none live faster than Dean Winchester. "A lemming on speed," he calls himself, quirking an eyebrow recently singed by a stray demon, but that is either an entirely too characteristic loosening of grammar, or yet another cultural reference that Castiel is unfamiliar with. (Surely one cannot be _on_ speed? It is not a location, but a relative term. But then, humans talk of being _on time_, which is equally ridiculous.)

In the moments - infinite, intolerable but for the opportunity to observe Dean at leisure - that Castiel finds himself trapped in, between thoughts and sensations (time is slow, _slow_), there is that sense of gradually coming to understand, to _be_, and Uriel would surely call that sacrilege, to wish to be human or to wish to be other than what God plans, but this, too, is God's plan. Castiel is sure of it. It is only law to love one's neighbor; as the sky loves the earth, and the angel loves the man, and the man loves the demon, from whom the angel must save him, forthwith. It is the natural order of things. Castiel does not wish to deceive himself, for deceit is of the dark. Instead, he wishes to be thoroughly and unashamedly in the light of things, in the gold-limned edges of them that seem so jagged and final to mortal beings. He wishes to experience, to understand, to _know_ the world Dean comes from. To be a part of that world. To return to Dean, perhaps, even a fraction of the regard that Dean does him the honor of giving him.

And thus, when the day arrives that he finally _touches_ Dean Winchester - without any purpose other than the 'unfettered enjoyment' of it - he knows the truth of what drives that touch, beyond the mere whisper of skin upon skin, or the gathering of perspiration behind a bent knee, or the filtering of dawn light through the shell of Dean's ear, transparent and veined as a winter leaf.

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><p><strong>fin.<strong>

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